The method fs.openSync() provided by the fs built-in module is the best way.

It returns a file descriptor:

const fs = require('fs')
const filePath = './.data/initialized'

const fd = fs.openSync(filePath, 'w')

The w flag creates the file if it doesn’t exist, and if the file exists it overwrites it (clearing its content).

Use the a flag to avoid overwriting. The file is still created if it does not exist.

If you do not need the file descriptor, wrap the call in fs.closeSync() to close the file:

const fs = require('fs')
const filePath = './.data/initialized'

fs.closeSync(fs.openSync(filePath, 'w'))

Lessons in this unit:

0:	Introduction
1:	How to check if a file exists in Node.js
2:	▶︎ How to create an empty file in Node.js
3:	How to get the names of all the files in a folder in Node
4:	How to get the last updated date of a file using Node.js
5:	How to remove a file with Node.js
6:	How to write a JSON object to file in Node.js
7:	How to empty a folder in Node.js
8:	Working with file descriptors in Node
9:	Node File Paths
10:	Node file stats
11:	Working with folders in Node
12:	How to use the Node.js fs module with async/await
13:	How to get the current folder in Node
14:	How to get the file extension in Node.js from the MIME type
15:	How to get the file extension in Node.js
16:	How to list files in a folder in Node
17:	How to mass rename files in Node.js
18:	Node.js get all files in a folder recursively
19:	Incrementing multiple folders numbers at once using Node.js
20:	Save some text to a file in Node.js